


The Thin Line Between Death and Immortality

by natcat5



Series: Dark Month 2015 [26]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Death, Gen, Immortality, Vampire AU, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-29 01:43:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5111720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natcat5/pseuds/natcat5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They can live forever.</p><p>Deprived of blood, a vampire will starve, will go mad, but will not die. Starvation, dehydration, will not kill them. Only an utter obliteration and detachment of the head from the body can do that, and even then, there are cases that say otherwise. They are immortal. </p><p>But they are also dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Thin Line Between Death and Immortality

“I’m dead, you know,” Kaneki says, quiet. There are shadows beneath his eyes. The white of his hair isn’t as striking as it might have been, with his skin as pale as it is. It’s strange to look at him and think there is no beat pumping blood through his veins, no air moving through his lungs. His body has stopped. Its processes will never move again. He’s frozen, moves only by blood stolen from others. He’s ‘dead’.

“And yet,” Hide says, an awkward, sad smile, “You’re going to outlive me. So what does that say? What does being dead mean, anyway?”

\--

And who does not fear death?

The unknown of it, the finality. The impossibility of rectifying any mistakes, correcting regrets, achieving any things you had not had a chance to do in life. Plunging into an eternity that no one can say for certain exists. Is it salvation? Damnation? Or endless nothingness? Death, the final death, could be any of these things.

But the death that affects the vampires, the nightwalkers, the ghouls, is not that. It is a bodily death, that leaves the mind in place. Leaves the personality and spirit in a body that will not age and regenerates like a synthetic, non-organic flesh. More a suit of withered capillaries and cells in stasis then a living organism. Something barely constituting a person.

And like that, they can live forever.

Deprived of blood, a vampire will starve, will go mad, but will not die. Starvation, dehydration, will not kill them. Only an utter obliteration and detachment of the head from the body can do that, and even then, there are cases that say otherwise. They are immortal.

But they are also dead.

\--

They are legally dead.

That is the reality of it, simply put.

His skin is cold. There is no pulse within his wrist, beneath his breast or fluttering on the side of his neck. His veins are empty and still, heart not pumping blood through them. He does not need to draw breath if he isn’t speaking, has no need for air.

He is legally dead.

He is dead.

When he returns to his apartment, newly turned, his human blood still smeared across his body, it’s all that echoes in his mind. _Dead dead dead. You are no longer alive. You are not a living person. You are a walking, animated corpse._

In school, he studied the Persons Appeal, where vampire activists fought the passing of legislature that would classify vampires as legally deceased in the eyes of the government.

For a long time, vampires had been fringe members of society. Ostracized and hunted. Hated and feared. They’d existed on the outskirts, or in the underbellies of cities and villages. They handled their own affairs and mingled willingly with humans only to feed. Officially. But the story outside of the public mind was different. It was not as difficult as one might assume, for a vampire to pass for human. People didn’t go around checking each other’s pulses, after all, and Japan as a society was not incredibly keen on touching in general.

But as the modern age advanced, it became more and more obvious that vampires were mingling among humans undetected. Living human lives. Occupying human spaces for as long as they could, and moving on and constructing new identities when they couldn’t. Groups began to mobilize, began to push for vampires to come out of the shadows. It would be so much easier to live if they didn’t have to move every few years. To be able to apply for jobs and make friends with the people _knowing_ that you weren’t going to age. Vampire activism became a _thing._ And predictably, there was push back.

The Animation Act sought out to classify vampires as reanimated corpses, and nothing more. Legally dead. Unable to keep property, papers, money, or positions. The bill would have made vampires legal only as dependents to humans, or as wards of the state. It had raised debates on what made a person a person. Whether it was body or soul. Whether there was any basis to the idea of a soul anyways. Whether a reanimated corpse was hygienic to have around children. Whether it was murder to kill them if they were already dead.

It doesn’t matter that the vampires won their case. The majority of humanity sees them as nothing but walking corpses. The people who used to be his own, who used to be like him, will now see him as nothing but dead. His eyes are sunken and his hair has bleached itself from the stress. He looks like a ghost, a spirit. He looks like a pale reflection of a Kaneki that used to exist, but no longer does. A Kaneki that is dead.

He is dead.

\--

There are conflicting opinions.

“If I was dead, could I do this?” Touka says sourly, before elbowing him the gut. “Don’t be an idiot.”

“It’s best that you just live as best you can, without worrying about the details,” Yomo says pragmatically, “There’s no reason to tie yourself up in the particulars.”

“Dead or alive, doesn’t matter a fucking bit to me,” Nishiki drawls, one eyebrow raised. “Do you really care, when it comes down to it? You’re still walking and talking and existing, and you’ll keep doing that for a hell of a lot longer than the humans that are ‘alive’, so what’s the problem?”

“I can make you a god,” Rize had said, hovering over him with her fangs bared in a grin. “I can drain you like a pig and let you die a slab of human livestock, or I can gift you with immortality and let you live above the filth of this city. Which should I choose, hm? Which one? Which one, _Kaneki-kun._ ”

Kaneki never found out what she chose, in the end. Someone dropped some steel girders on her, and he was captured by her enemies as he tried to stagger for help. He had tried to tell them that her body was trapped under the steel bars at the top of the building, but apparently it wasn’t there when they went to check. She was gone. So they tortured him for information, and then turned him so they could torture him some more.

“All that time you spent asking me to just kill you, and now you’re dead.” Jason had grinned. Yamori beneath the mask. Pliers clacking in his hand. “So what do you want now, hm? Is this no good for you? Is this not what you wanted? Shall we try and decide what makes alive, ‘alive’? Will you be more dead if I take an arm, a leg, half your torso? How much of you has to be detached before you’re dead enough to be happy? I’m curious. I want to find out. Shall we start with the fingers?”

_What’s one thousand minus seven?_

Kaneki wants to feel disgusted for killing him. For killing them all. But he can’t. He can’t at all.

Is that part of him, the empathy part, is _that_ what’s dead? What’s been killed? Is that the ‘human’ part that no longer exists?

There are conflicted opinions. He hasn’t decided on his yet.

\--

“I wish you wouldn't say that,” Kaneki murmurs. His eyes are cast downwards, towards his feet. The nails on his toes are still black.

“It’s true though,” Hide says, tone a little softer, “You’re going to live a long time, Kaneki, and that’s not a bad thing.”

“That indirectly implies that it’s a _good_ thing, and I’d have to respectfully disagree,” he replies shortly, and Hide sighs.

“Not everything’s so black and white,” he says, “Alive and human aren’t interchangeable, and neither are dead and vampire. Can’t you see a middle ground? It doesn’t have to be the way the media and the government paints it to be. The world doesn’t really work in dichotomies.”

Hide moves in closer, wraps an arm around Kaneki’s shoulder so that he can pull him in.

“I say you’re alive for as long as you exist, and you exist for as long as you’re alive,” he states, pressing his forehead to his friend’s. “If you were dead, I wouldn’t be able to talk to you like this. We wouldn’t be able to sit in this park together. If you were dead I’d be alone. And then _I’d_ probably die of loneliness, like a rabbit, and then where would we be? Both of us, in the ground.”

Kaneki tries to fight the small smile threatening to break free, but he can’t, and Hide’s eyes brighten he notices it.

“You’re ridiculous,” Kaneki says. Hide smiles.

“And you’re alive,” he replies, warmly, “You’re alive, Kaneki.”

 


End file.
